Tag: babylon 5

Actor Stephen Furst, who became known for the role of Flounder in the movie Animal House and then major TV roles of Dr. Elliot Axelrod on St. Elsewhere and Vir Cotto on Babylon 5 (where he also directed a few episodes), passed away yesterday morning at home surrounded by family and friends after battling diabetes for many years. He was 62.

Verizon’s go90 service has added several Warner Bros. shows that had a strong fanbase, hoping to draw them to their service.

The new shows include Veronica Mars, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Babylon 5, Fringe, Almost Human, Believe, and Stalker. All will start streaming tomorrow, April 4th, except for Veronica Mars which will start sometime in May.

According to Chip Canter, the general manager for Verizon Digital Entertainment, “To be able to bring these seven titles to our users is a great opportunity to continue to double down on a genre that’s performed well for go90 and attract users who have been demanding these series or may be discovering them for the first time. This order represents our commitment to a data-driven programming strategy that marries popular traditional series with our originals and organizes them into 4-5 key audience-specific networks as a way to super serve our audiences; these series are a great fit for our go90 Saga network.”

Verizon’s go90 streaming service provides free streaming service built around a mobile-oriented social platform, marrying traditional series and original programming. Verizon Wireless customers can stream the shows data-free.

Emmy award winning visual effects artist Ron Thornton, best known for his work on Babylon 5 passed away yesterday at home after a short illness at the age of 59, as confirmed by his colleague Emile Smith on Twitter.

Thornton co-founded Foundation Imaging and pioneered the CGI and visual effects methods started on Babylon 5 using Newtek’s Video Toaster hardware and Lightwave 3D modeling software that allowed such effects to be both realistic and within a television show budget. He won an Emmy in 1993 for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects for the work on the pilot movie, Babylon 5: The Gathering, and had three more nominations. Prior to Babylon 5, he had worked on Spaceballs, Critters, and Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.

After a falling out with the Babylon 5 producers in the third season, he worked on Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise and co-created the series Hypernauts.

I was sadly notified yesterday that actor-turned-radio show host Jerry Doyle, who played Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5, passed away suddenly at the age of 60, which has been confirmed by his family. The cause of death has not been determined.

After Babylon 5, he turned his eye on politics. A staunch conservative, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in 2000, but spent little money on the campaign and only received 30% of the vote. He then became a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. He also created the website and podcast Epic Times.

Babylon 5 creator and co-writer/showrunner of the upcoming Netflix series Sense8 J. Michael Straczynski has signed on to write the adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy as a TV series for Spike TV.

Given the long history the adaptation has had over the years, I feel a little more confident that this might actually get made.

Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy, which consists of the novels Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars, detail the colonization and terraforming of Mars with very hard science behind it, with a story spanning a couple centuries.

He’s said many times that Warner Bros owns all the TV rights to Babylon 5, and that he’ll never see more money from TV. However, when he negotiated the deal with WB, he managed to retain feature film rights for himself. It seems that WB would still get a cut, making it highly unlikely any other studio would touch the project – but JMS doesn’t have just any other studio in mind…he has Studio JMS, which now has had enough success that it is feasible for it to fund a feature film. So now he plans to have a script done by 2015, and WB will have one year to decide to move forward with it – otherwise in 2016 Studio JMS will do it.

It isn’t certain what form the movie would take, but whispers across the Interweb seem to indicate that it will be a reboot of some form.

Every fan of Star Trek knows who actor Michael Ansara was…he played the Klingon commander Kang in the episode “Day of the Dove”, and then reprised the role not once but twice, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager. Ansara passed away Wednesday at the age of 91.

You’ve probably seen him in many other things as well, with his distinctive face and voice…just in the SF and fantasy realm, Ansara had guest roles in Babylon 5, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (as Kane, Princess Ardala’s right-hand man, replacing the original actor from the pilot), Lost In Space (as the father of a young Kurt Russell), Land of the Giants, The Outer Limits and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as well as the 1961 movie – overall, he has 189 different titles to his credit. In the late 50s, he had starring roles playing Native Americans in the series Broken Arrow and Law of the Plainsman.

He received a star on the Walk of Fame in 1960. He was also married to I Dream of Jeannie‘s Barbara Eden for sixteen years.

Actor Robin Sachs, who has played many different roles across the board, often in prosthetic makeup, passed away last week at the age of 61.

Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer might recognize his face as that of Ethan Rayne, but he did a lot of voice work (most recently in the game Mass Effect 3) and acted frequently in prosthetic makeup, including the role of Sarris in the Tim Allen comedy Galaxy Quest, four different roles in Babylon 5 (two Narn and new Minbari), and General Valen in (Star Trek: Voyager).

Author Peter David, well known for his works in comics and the Star Trek universe, suffered a stroke several days ago and is in the process of recovering.

Peter David has been prolific in the comics and SF genres, writing for several comic titles including an incredible 12 year run on The Incredible Hulk. He’s written episodes for several TV series including Babylon 5 and Crusade, and co created the kids show Space Cases with Babylon 5 and Lost In Space star Bill Mumy – which in the first season starred a young girl with rainbow colored hair, played by Jewel Staite, more familiar to fans as Kaylee in Firefly and Dr. Keller in Stargate Atlantis. He also did a number of Star Trek comics and novels.